A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

Get my upvote.

But sometimes stopping one plot will kill an operation that can stop many others later. Somebody has to weigh that and that somebody always looks bad.

> Would South Africa be a better place if it had become a Russian-influenced Communist country?

If it had been, it would have been thanks to idiotic operations like this.

There was no secret that there were tons of SACP members working within the ANC - they were in an explicit alliance with the ANC and COSATU (trade union alliance), and when the SACP forerunner - the CPSA - was outlawed with the introduction of apartheid, because they'd consistently opposed it, many CPSA members joined the ANC with full knowledge of the ANC. Some continued working within the ANC after the party was re-formed as SACP.

To the extent the SACP had "secret" operatives in the ANC, they were secret from the public, not from the ANC. There'd be no point - SACP members were actively encouraged by both the SACP and ANC to be active in the ANC leadership.

And the official statement on Mandela's death from the ANC [1] is what stated he was a member of the SACP Central Committee - it was not a statement from the SACP.

However, given the policies he's actually fought for, which included openly opposing a lot of the SACP's programme, this likely says more about the close mutual relationship of the SACP and the ANC than about Mandela's political views.

More importantly, prior to Mandela's arrest, the ANC was largely a social democratic leaning organization. If the CIA was concerned about Soviet influence on the ANC, getting Mandela arrested was entirely counter-productive.

Because after Mandela and other leaders was arrested, the weakened ANC radicalised massively while it rebuilt as its leadership was forced into exile where the SACP used Soviet contacts to ensure training and supplies of weapons, and many ANC leaders ended up spending a lot of time working closely with Soviet-supported governments.

The CIA basically handed the ANC to the Soviets.

> Ending apartheid, creating a communist paradise, pick one.

That's a pretty idiotic statement. The CPSA/SACP made ending racial segregation a cornerstone of their programme to lead South Africa towards socialism from the 20's, about 30 years before apartheid was even introduced, and their membership continued to risk imprisonment for about 70 years to fight apartheid.

They did so because the Soviet dominated Comintern explicitly told them to.

There were plenty of Stalinists amongst them who nobody in their right mind would want to lead a country, but there were also a great of them that gave their lives to end apartheid because they believed it was the only way forward for South Africa, and members of the SACP were also central to the creation of the Freedom Charter

[1] http://www.anc.org.za/nelson/show.php?id=10658

Because of malware delivered through unblocked ad networks.

(FTFY)

One thing I find bizarre about 9/11 is that very few people seem to openly question why the World Trade Center was amongst the top targets that day. Perhaps if people looked a little deeper into what the WTO does it might help us make better decisions going forward.

In the interest of balance, the situation on 9/11 wasn't completely the fault of the US. Saudi Arabia appears to have been the main driving force behind the attacks. There are a number of reasons the US avoided attacking Saudi Arabia and went into Afghanistan instead, including past political deals and Saudi Arabia being the home of Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims (if you're looking for the quickest way to radicalise Muslims, damaging Mecca would probably be it).

I believe the main way for resolving the mess in the Middle East is to reduce our reliance on oil and move to locally controlled sources of energy like renewables. It's the oil money that's fuelling the conflict on both sides, if we cut that out of the equation I'm confident we would find it much easier to work towards peace in the Middle East.